High Power Efficiency and Dynamic Range Analog Photonic Link with Suppressed Dispersion-Induced Power Fading

An analog photonic link (APL) based on a dual-polarization dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DP-DPMZM) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The proposed APL can suppress the nonlinearity of modulator, compensate the power fading induced by dispersion (PFID), and improve the power efficiency of link, leading to large dynamic range. The PFID and the nonlinearity are suppressed by adjusting the phase of optical carrier (OC) and polarization controller (PC), respectively. In addition, by optimizing the optical carrier to sideband ratio (OCSR) in the DP-DPMZM, the output RF power and the power efficiency of link can be significantly improved while the total optical power received by the photodetector (PD) remains constant. An experiments are performed to demonstrate the feasibility of the APL. The results show that an spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) of 103.2 dB·Hz 4/5 for 13.73 GHz is achieved after compensating PFID and nonlinearity, which is 32 dB higher than that of a conventional double sideband (DSB) assisted APL. After OCSR optimizing, the output RF power achieves 13-dB improvement, and the SFDR is further raised to 114.1 dB·Hz 4/5 .